How to Plan a Collection for Surface Design and Art Licensing
Designing a collection can feel like an overwhelming task, but there is one surefire way to make it easier – strategic planning!
In this post, I’ll break down the steps for planning a collection from start to finish. I know planning may not feel very glamorous, but when you take the time to plan your collection ahead of time, it allows you to focus on the most important (and fun) part – creating the art!
The Anatomy of Collections
First, let’s break down what kinds of artwork should be included in your collections. There are three main categories of art that you can include.
Hero Illustrations or Patterns
The “hero” of your collection is the main motif in the collection. It can be either a standalone illustration or a pattern. You can have multiple heroes if that works well for your collection.
Check out an example of how I use multiple heroes in this mini-collection blog post.
The hero drives the theme and is the focal point of the collection. I recommend that you start by identifying your hero illustration and build out the secondary and blender patterns from there. I promise it will make the process so much easier!
Secondary/Complex Patterns
Collections also typically include some patterns to tie the whole thing together. The reason for this is that licensees are often looking for designs that they can use on multiple products. Think of stationery, for example. You may have an amazing hero design that would work on a greeting card or planner cover, but if the licensee is also looking for a coordinating pattern as an envelope liner or inner cover, they might pass up your design if it’s presented on its own.
Secondary patterns (also called supporting or complex patterns) are usually more complex patterns that support the hero design and follow the collection theme.
Simple/Blender Patterns
A blender pattern is a simple pattern that fits in with the rest of the collection but is a lot less complex than the secondary patterns. These help fill out the collection and tie everything together without it feeling too visually overwhelming. There are also a lot of practical uses for blender patterns that licensing partners might be looking for. For example, a standalone hero design can work well on a kid's pajama top, and a blender pattern could work well on the pajama bottoms.
Decide what product you’re designing for
Now that you understand the elements that make up a collection, let’s talk about planning! The first step is to decide the end use of your designs – aka what products you want them to end up on, or what companies you plan to pitch to.
Here are a couple of examples of how collections can look different for different products and industries
Greeting Card Collection
If you’re designing for greeting cards, your hero designs should reflect that. Greeting cards typically include some kind of typography or message on them, so you’ll want to design multiple hero illustrations featuring a quote or greeting.
Even if you’re designing primarily greeting card designs, you may want to include some patterns as well. You never know what licensing partners may be looking for (remember, the envelope liner example!) so it can be helpful to include a few coordinating patterns.
Fabric Collection
If you’re designing for a specific product that requires repeating patterns like fabric, your entire collection should consist of repeat patterns. You can still use the model of Hero, Supporting, and Blender patterns to guide your collection design, but everything should be a pattern.
All-Encompassing Collection
Most of the collections I design are broad enough to fit multiple licensing categories. If you don’t have a specific product or company in mind, you can create a collection with standalone hero illustrations, secondary patterns, and blender patterns to cover all your bases.
Brainstorm a Theme
Next, it’s time to brainstorm a theme! All collections should center around a general theme. The pieces in the collection don’t all have to match perfectly, but they should fit under the same thematic umbrella.
Your theme can center around seasonal trends, holidays, trending motifs, topics you’re interested in, a color palette – the options are endless!
If you design motifs that don’t exactly fit into a “theme” like florals or abstract designs, think about what will make your collection cohesive. Is it the color story? The inspiration behind it?
In this example, I created a floral and geometric collection, but my theme was the magenta color palette that tied it all together. (That was the Pantone color of the year that year, so it was a trend-forward theme!) Even though these designs are more abstract, I used the magenta of the color palette to give it a cohesive theme and feel.
Take it one design at a time
Collections can feel overwhelming, so the best way to tackle designing a collection is to take it one design at a time. Use what you’ve learned in this post to think about your collection as a whole. You’ll want to think through your theme and what products you’re designing for, but you don’t have to know what every single piece will look like from the beginning.
Start with the hero.
Once you’ve created a hero design that you’re happy with, you can easily pull inspiration from it to build out the rest of the collection. I often do this by isolating elements in my hero illustrations and repurposing them into patterns.
This is a win-win for me for two reasons. One, I don’t have to re-draw anything, so it saves me a ton of time. And two, the designs immediately feel cohesive since I’m using actual elements from the original design.
Here’s an example of this in real life. The “Fa La La” design was one of my heroes in a Holiday collection. I took one of the poinsettia elements from that design and repurposed it to create a simple yet beautiful blender pattern!
I hope this post was helpful! Good luck out there creating your collections for surface design!
